Bored on the Fourth? Got the Weber grill going and just waiting for nightfall and fireworks to begin?

Try cheese racing.

You’ll need:

• One charcoal grill, not too hot
• Individually wrapped cheez food slices
• Some alcohol lubricated friends
• More alcohol lubricant

Each player casts a slice of cheese on grill.
The player whose cheese fully inflates first wins!
If you’re a rules and stats type, reference the full official CRASS (Cheese Racing Association) rules.

We’ve been watching the transformation of the building that once housed El Conejo into Thai Cafe, which opened last weekend. It’s a standalone building between two strip malls that collectively act as Irvine’s defacto Chinatown. Like a Thai monkey in the middle, it offers a non-Chinese alternative to the many good restaurants on this intersection of Jeffrey and Walnut.

While the outside of the building is nothing to look at, the months spent gutting the inside have paid off. It’s a handsome room with a clean modern design that’s elegant enough for casual dining.

You can’t operate a Thai restaurant in America without the obligatory pad thai on the menu. We expect it, like chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant, or edamame at a Japanese one, as if these items are laser etched onto every menu in their native countries.  We received a restrained version, easy on the tamarind, and easier still on the palm sugar.

You’ll find horrible versions of pad thai out there. The worst offenders drown their noodles in a ketchup-red syrup, like pad thai a la Chef Boyardee. You’ll occasionally find really complex versions tasting of garlic, citrus, scallion and dried shrimp. [ed-before you ask me where, it’s at a place in New York that has long since closed] Thai Cafe hits a not-too-gringo, not-too-ethnofunk grounder down the middle, easily fielded by Irvine’s Asian American set.

Boat noodles are one of my favorite Thai dishes, when I can find them. It’s something of a specialist’s dish. It’s a beef noodle dish, like pho, but the rich brown soup is more heavily spiced with star anise, lightly sweeted, thicker, and murky. Boat noodles soup is traditionally thickened with beef or pork blood, which adds a minerally edge and a substantial body to the soup. Thai Cafe’s didn’t display forensic blood evidence, like the version at Sapp Coffee House in Hollywood, so if you didn’t already know, you might happily sip away at the five-spice scented soup, unaware of your vampirical tendencies.

I was offered a choice of noodles and spice level, but not a choice of meats. Mine came with several perfectly simmered cuts of beef, and for once, a meatball that I enjoyed. Usually, the little rubber golf balls that come with these kinds of soup dishes are an afterthought.

You don’t accidentally make a soup this good the first week a restaurant’s open. I asked where else they’ve cooked, and they own Thai Kitchen, also in Irvine. Where their first store is geared more for lower priced takeout lunches, this new location offers a more sophisticated menu and higher priced items. Entrees are $8.95 to $15.95, with the majority priced at $10.95.

I didn’t see any of really funky jungle dishes with Northern Thai or Cambodian influences. They’re not competing against Stanton’s Thai Nakorn, Norwalk’s Renu Nakorn, or the Thai Town holes in walls up in Hollywood. This is a solidly suburban menu, but one that’s worth exploring in more detail. It’s usually a good idea to give new restaurants a couple months to get their act together, but based on my first try,  it seems they already do.

Thai Cafe
14715 Jeffrey Rd.
Irvine, CA 92618
949 559 5382
Mon-Sun 11am - 10pm
(Hours may change. I was told they’re considering staying open until 12 midnight)

…  a great food country. Cooks from every other nation bring their proud food traditions, and submit them before the collective “eeeew, what’s that?” of a squeamish American public.

… a place where our most delicious native culinary tradition, slow smoked barbecue, is celebrated in backyards and contests from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.

… a country where my rainbow coalition of a BBQ team was chosen to represent America’s other, other favorite national pastime (after baseball, and invading sovereign nations) for a short video documentary by the US State Department. Check it out here:

This was shot at the 2008 Stagecoach country music festival. If you didn’t know better, it looks like they held a  concert to play second fiddle to an enormous barbecue contest, instead of the other way around. Thanks to Big Country for joining forces with the Four Q team for this contest (hence “Four Q Country”), our friends Glen and Janette for their hard work at this event, Janine and Brian for a fantastic video production, and Thom Emery and Ben Lobenstein for their work to make this contest successful.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody!